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The Commentariat -- Feb. 26, 2016
Afternoon Update:
For those of us who judged last night's food fight to be, well, an "Animal House"-worthy food fight, if among slightly less mature participants, we were ever so wrong. These guys are class acts. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Marco Rubio relentlessly mocked Donald Trump on Friday, escalating the attacks he unleashed during Thursday night's debate and even suggesting the Republican frontrunner may have wet his pants on the stage." ...
<'>... Mighty presidential. P.S. If, BTW, you forgot how a real president speaks, check out the video below, where President Obama addresses the Syrian civil war, ISIS & international implications.Claude Brodesser-Akner of the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie is endorsing Donald Trump for president. Appearing next to Trump in Fort Worth, Texas, Christie said Trump would 'do what needs to be done to protect the American people. The one person Bill and Hillary Clinton do not want to see on that stage is Donald Trump,' said Christie." Thanks to MAG for the lead. CW: I have two comments: (1) The main reason Christie endorsed Trump was for the principled reason that he (a) got a out of New Jersey on (b) Donald's goldplated private jet; (2) what MAG said.
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John Parkinson of ABC News: "President Obama ordered his national security team to 'continue accelerating' the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State 'on all fronts.'Obama convened a meeting with his National Security team today at the State Department as diplomats grapple over the details of a cessation of hostilities in Syria":
Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama will convene a long-anticipated meeting at the White House next Tuesday with top Republican senators to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) will both attend, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. The spokesman said the meeting was arranged 'after a number of conversations, some more awkward than others.'" ...
... Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) announced Thursday he was withdrawing his name from consideration as a possible Supreme Court nominee, just one day after it became public the White House was weighing whether to select him." ...
... Eric Levitz & Claire Landsbaum of New York: "... appointing Sandoval might have been a cynical maneuver aimed at clarifying just how extreme the Republican Party's intransigence truly is. But it's unclear if Senate Democrats would have been willing to hold their tongues long enough for Obama to carry out his troll. On several upcoming Supreme Court cases, a Sandoval nomination would actually have been worse for progressive priorities than if Scalia's seat simply remained vacant."
Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Among the court's members, [Justice Scalia] was the most frequent traveler, to spots around the globe, on trips paid for by private sponsors. When Justice Scalia died two weeks ago, he was staying, again for free, at a West Texas hunting lodge owned by a businessman whose company had recently had a matter before the Supreme Court.... Many of the justices are frequent expenses-paid travelers, a practice that some court scholars say ... could potentially create the appearance of a conflict of interest, particularly when the organizations are known for their conservative or liberal views.... Legislation is pending in the House and the Senate that would require the Supreme Court to create a formal ethics system, beyond the Ethics in Government Act, similar to the one that governs actions of all other federal judges. That system is known as the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Chief Justice Roberts has argued that the Supreme Court, even though it generally abides by this judicial ethics code, is not obligated to do so." ...
... Paul Krugman blogpost title: "Antonin Scalia really was a character out of a Dan Brown novel." ...
... Charles Pierce: Scalia "passed away before the House of Representatives could get busy making it easy for him and the rest of these be-robed predators to honor God and his creatures by tying them to the hood of the family Olds. The House is getting ready to pass a truly noxious bit of legislation that seems to be aimed at destroying the Endangered Species Act by killing off anything that act might protect namely, the Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2015.... This law is a bulging hope chest for the sadistic followers of St. Hubert...." ...
... Humane Society: "There's not one regular deer or duck hunter who gets anything out of this bill. Any lawmaker who claims he's for sportsmen by supporting this bill is guilty of grandstanding.... This is the most destructive anti-wildlife proposal ever to come to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.... If Congress exhibits the worst of judgment and caves in to the trophy-hunting lobby by passing this scam of a bill, we'll call upon President Obama to give it a clean kill shot."
Katie Benner & Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "Apple on Thursday filed its formal opposition to the federal court order requiring it to help law enforcement officials break into an iPhone, setting the stage for more legal wrangling in a case that has pitted the world's most valuable company against the United States government." ...
... Danny Yadron, et al., of the Guardian: "Apple's lawyers believe forcing America's largest company to help the government crack open one of its iPhones would violate the US constitution and be a misinterpretation of a 227-year-old law." ...
... Spencer Ackerman & Sam Thielman of the Guardian: "The director of the FBI has conceded that future judges will look to his battle with Apple as a precedent for law enforcement access to locked or encrypted mobile devices, the first time the government has conceded that the implications of the case stretch beyond an investigation into the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The ultimate outcome of the Apple-FBI showdown is likely to 'guide how other courts handle similar requests',James Comey told a congressional intelligence panel on Thursday, a softening of his flat insistence on Sunday that the FBI was not attempting to 'set a precedent'."
Presidential Race
This Week's JournoMeme: "Is it too late for Marco to save the Republican party?"
It's the Media's Fault. Donald Trump has portrayed himself now consistently as fighting for the working people. And he has a record of sticking it to working people for 35 years. If any other candidate in this race had his record, there would be nonstop reporting on it. Unfortunately he's being pumped up because many in the media with a bias know that he'll be easy to beat in a general election. So we're gonna put a stop to it now. There's no way we're going to allow a con artist to take over the conservative movement. -- Marco Rubio, this morning
... if anything, Rubio and Cruz themselves bear a fair amount of blame for the failure to stop Trump. As has been widely documented, both refrained from seriously going after Trump for months, apparently calculating either that engaging Trump was too risky or that it would compromise any efforts to scoop up Trump's supporters after he faded. -- Greg Sargent
Michael Barbaro & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times on last night's GOP "debate": "In a series of acid exchanges, a newly pugnacious Mr. Rubio, long mocked for a robotic and restrained style, interrupted Mr. Trump, quizzed him, impersonated him, shouted over him and left him looking unsettled. It was an unfamiliar reversal of roles for the front-runner, who found himself so frequently the target of assaults from Mr. Rubio and Senator that he complained they must have been a ploy for better television ratings.... The two-hour rumpus frequently devolved into unmediated bouts of shouting, name-calling and pleas to the moderators for chances to respond to the latest insult." ...
... Karen Tumulty & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Sparring between the two [-- Rubio & Trump --] dominated the debate, turning the other three candidates on the stage into bystanders for much of the evening." ...
... Ben Jacobs & Tom Dart of the Guardian: "It was the first time rival candidates have used a debate stage to go after the foundation of Trump's campaign -- his experience as a businessman, his assertion that he is the only candidate who can be relied upon to be a stalwart opponent of illegal immigration, and his fundamental belief in 'winning'.... The concerted attacks and Trump's counterpunching left John Kasich and Ben Carson as relative bystanders. At one point, Carson pleaded: 'Can somebody attack me?'"
... Driftglass's liveblog/Tweetathon covers the details, enhanced by poetic license. "Rubio: 'Why won't you hire my mommy, Donald?'" CW: As usual, the calibre of the debaters makes it hard to tell where they leave off & satire begins. ...
... Here's the Washington Post's "annotated transcript." ...
... Will Rahn & Olivia Nuzzi of the Daily Beast: Rubio "delivered what was easily his best debate performance yet Thursday night, hammering frontrunner Donald Trump repeatedly on his character, his business record, and his claims to being a conservative. It was the performance he needed. The question now is whether it will matter at all." ...
... Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "... now that Rubio has gone on the attack, the question is whether he can survive the inevitable counterattack. Trump has hitherto largely ignored Rubio, but if the past is any guide, Rubio will now be in Trump's crosshairs. If Rubio does turn the odds around and win, Thursday night will be seen as the turning point. The problem is that Trump could continue to steamroll through the primaries, which will prove only that Rubio waited too long to go after him." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz followed nearly identical plans in Thursday night's Republican presidential debate. They cast themselves as the true conservatives in the debate and attacked Donald Trump as an ideological heretic. They almost completely abstained on attacks against each other, recognizing that Trump is on the verge of breaking away from the pack." ...
... Jamelle Bouie: Rubio, & especially Cruz, don't understand the basis for Trump's appeal. If Rubio has any chance of taking Trump down, it's to keep up the attack on Trump's exploitation, via "Trump University," of the ordinary Americans he claims he'll protect. ...
... Jessica Roy of New York: "Unlike most of his fellow Republicans, Donald Trump isn't afraid to acknowledge that Planned Parenthood provides important health services for millions of women across America. But exactly like his fellow Republicans, he'd also defund it." ...
... The Art of the Israel-Palestine Deal. Michelle Goldberg of Slate explains to Marco Rubio that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real estate deal, somthing Donald Trump seems to intuitively get. ...
... The Guardian's liveblog of the GOP presidential debate is here. The New York Times is liveblogging here. ...
... CW: I can't stand to watch those blowhards, but I'm enjoying the liveblogs. The reporters make the "debate" sound like a schoolyard fight: "Am not." "Are, too." Maggie Haberman of the Times: "... while both Cruz and Rubio are shaving some points off Trump, we're at a point in the campaign where those two are basically saying to him, 'How dare you say you wouldn't let people die in the streets?'"
Today's must-read is Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone essay on "how America made Donald Trump unstoppable.... Trump's basic argument is the same one every successful authoritarian movement in recent Western history has made: that the regular guy has been screwed by a conspiracy of incestuous elites. The Bushes are half that conspiratorial picture, fronts for a Republican Party establishment and whose sum total of accomplishments, dating back nearly 30 years, are two failed presidencies, the sweeping loss of manufacturing jobs, and a pair of pitiable Middle Eastern military adventures -- the second one achieving nothing but dead American kids and Junior's re-election." CW: Please take the time to appreciate the prose as well as the point. ...
... Paul Krugman writes everything you need to know about the delusions & practices of the GOP establishment. ...
... CW: What Krugman doesn't cover is racism, etc., in the Democratic party leadership. Before you get all smug about how Democratic leaders would never say & do the kinds of things Nixon, Reagan & Trump did, let me remind you that, yes, they do. Bill Clinton became president because he embraces racist tropes. Then he acted on them. When his wife said at a campaign rally in 1996 that it was necessary to "bring to heel ... superpredators," she was pulling a Nixon/Reagan. Mind you, her remarks, & Bill's remarks & actions re: "criminal justice reform" & "welfare reform," are exactly the same as Trump's. The Clintons are progressives of convenience -- they need the black/female/gay vote to win the White House. This is fundamentally how they differ from Bernie Sanders, who was willing to be arrested -- and was -- in support of racial equality. Young Bernie was not thinking in terms of tactical self-interest when he marched against Jim Crow; everything the Clintons do & say in public is self-interested. This is what the kids mean by "authenticity"; they may not be able to adequately articulate it, but in their hearts they get it. As for Trump, he would be a Democratic demagogue if Republicans had not been more successful than Democrats in exploiting the dark urges of the white mob. When I vote for Hillary Clinton in November, I know I'll be voting for a racist homophobe, just as I knew it when I voted twice for Bill Clinton on those November days long past. In hopes for a better tomorrow, I vote for the lesser of two evils today. ...
... On Hillary Clinton's 1996 remarks, Robert Mackey & Zaid Jilani, writing in the Intercept, provide helpful context. Now, as Hillary said this week when confronted about her past remarks on black youths, let's get "back to the [real] issues." ...
... Tim Egan chalks up Trump's impulsive, erratic behavior to chronic sleep deprivation. Sounds silly, but he might be right. ...
... While his former opponents were debating each other, once-presidential candidate Lindsey Graham was speaking at the Washington Press Club:
Culture Wars, Ctd. digby: No, those Republican "populists" who like the "anti-PC" Donald Trump are not going to be voting Democratic when somebody tells them Democratic economic policies are much better for them than are Republican policies. "... what the Trump phenomenon represents [is] a primal scream of loss. Yes, it's economic. The whole middle class in America feels the squeeze and the poor are as screwed as they ever were. But for these people, the Trump people, it's cultural more than anything else. They feel they have lost their social status And even if they become more economically secure, the way think they were back in the 1950s, they will never get that back. On some level they know this. And that's what they're angry about." ...
... ** Oh yeah? Here's one Republican -- neocon Robert Kagan -- who is ready to switch sides, as he says in this WashPo op-ed: "A plague has descended on the [Republican] party in the form of the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of U.S. politics.... He is ... the party's creation, its Frankenstein monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker.... Then there was the Obama hatred, a racially tinged derangement syndrome that made any charge plausible and any opposition justified.... For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." CW: A mostly fun read. ...
... Jonathan Chait comments on Kagan's op-ed: "The neoconservatives were originally moderate liberal critics of the Democratic Party, who objected to its leftward turn in the 1960s and 1970s and began their exodus from the broader Democratic Party around the McGovern campaign. Most of them are deeply enmeshed in the conservative movement now and have views about the role of government indistinguishable from those of other conservatives. But, eventually, some faction will break loose from the GOP and form the basis for a sane party that is capable of governing. Who knows? Maybe that faction will be the one that moved into the party a half-century ago." ...
... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "If Trump succeeds in capturing the Republican nomination, the debate that is now playing out on the margins of the right will be front and center for every elected Republican. They may soon have to choose: Would they rather have as President an enemy they can oppose[, i.e., Clinton], or one for whom they are -- in more ways than one -- responsible?" ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "David Duke, a white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, is urging the listeners of his radio program to volunteer and vote for Donald Trump. 'Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,' Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program Wednesday, referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio." CW: It would appear from that remark that Duke is such an ignorant asshole he doesn't realize Cruz & Rubio are as white as he is. Maybe whiter. I don't know anything about Duke's family heritage, but if he comes from a long line of Southerners, there's a high probability that Duke isn't as white as the driven snow. ...
... "Don't Vote for a Cuban." Martin Longman, in the Washington Monthly, on "the ugliest campaign ever." But don't worry; Reince Preibus is in control. ...
... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "While the Mexican government has said little about Mr. Trump's plan to beef up border security, two of the country's former presidents have a message for Mr. Trump: Mexico won't pay. 'I'm not going to pay,' Vicente Fox said, using a profanity to comment about the wall Thursday in an interview with Fusion.... Mr. Fox's successor, Felipe Calderón, expressed similar concerns about the wall this month. 'Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall!' Mr. Calderón told CNBC." ...
... CW: What Fox actually said was "I am not going to pay for this fucking wall." (He gave the interview in Spanish, but switched to English for that remark, which comes at the end of the linked clip.) ...
... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Multiple Republican campaign sources and operatives have confided that none of the remaining candidates for president have completed a major anti-Trump opposition research effort. For those hoping to blunt Trump's momentum, the late start on opposition research is no small problem.... The most common [explanation] is that few campaigns actually thought Trump would last long, making the need to dig into his past rather moot.... It is treated as a truism among Republicans that a vast reservoir of damaging opposition research remains untouched." Thanks to MAG for the link. ...
... Kevin Drum: "With all the money sloshing around the primary, nobody could manage to find a few million bucks to put together a professional ratfucking operation? Republicans really are losing their mojo." ...
... Here's some dirt, which the Guardian may have initially obtained from some political oppo research team:
>... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "... Donald Trump is being confronted with resurfaced allegations that he sexually assaulted and tried to rape a woman in the early 1990s. The woman alleged in a federal lawsuit in 1997 that Trump violated her 'physical and mental integrity' when he touched her intimately without consent after her boyfriend went into business with him.... The woman ... dropped the $125m lawsuit in Manhattan the following month. It coincided with a separate legal dispute between Trump and the woman's then-boyfriend over an alleged breach of contract relating to their beauty pageant business venture. Trump claimed at the time that the lawsuit alleging assault was aimed at pressuring him to settle the other dispute, which reportedly he did for a six-figure sum later that year.... Yet when asked by the Guardian whether she stood by the allegations detailed in the lawsuit, the woman said in a text message: 'Yes.'... Potentially confusing matters further, the woman appears to now be a supporter of Trump's campaign for the White House." ...
... Janell Ross of the Washington Post: "Melania Trump ... told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' that she has no problem whatsoever with her husband's public comments about Mexican and Muslim immigrants.... Her reason: She followed the [immigration] law and thinks others should have to do the same.... But what Melania Trump didn't say ... is this: Models like her don't exactly wait in the same much-talked-about immigration line as the average Mexican immigrant -- or, for that matter, immigrant workers who would like to come to the United States from anywhere in the world.... The U.S. government officially considers them workers with special skills for whom a certain number of visas ... are set aside each year."
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: A new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida Republicans, conducted after Jeb! dropped out of the race, shows Trump getting 44% of the vote & Rubio 28%. "If you are Rubio, there is no way of looking at this besides that it is an unmitigated disaster Trump leads easily with almost every demographic in the poll." ...
... Lee Drutman of Vox: "Rubio's chances were always poor. Ranked choice voting could have told us this sooner.... If we are really down to just Rubio and Cruz as the only viable alternatives against Trump, it looks like Rubio dropping out would help Cruz far more than Cruz dropping out would help Rubio.... Rubio's support is narrower than most thought, Cruz's support is wider.... The so-called 'establishment wing' of the Republican Party may be in even weaker shape and far fuzzier than most pundits tend to think."
Less-Great Expectations. Tal Kopan of CNN: "A super PAC supporting Ben Carson on Thursday sent out a fundraising email to supporters saying the candidate needs to be on the Republican ticket -- even as the vice presidential nominee -- in order to capture the minority vote. The email, signed by 2016 Committee National Chairman John Philip Sousa IV, said that the race is still 'in flux' but if Carson isn't on the ticket, 'The Democrats will win the White House and the America we love will disappear.... The demographics of America have changed dramatically, and that is why Ben Carson must stay in this race. He may not win the GOP nomination, but he still holds the winning hand in this political poker game. If Ben Carson is on the ticket, either as president or as vice president, we can win the White House by winning upwards of 25% of the black vote and 35% of the Hispanic vote.'" ...
... CW: See digby above for what "the America we love" looks like. According to Sousa IV, Carson's best-selling quality is his race. What is a black man to do when even his own backers are racists? Maybe a Sousa I march will cheer him up. He can parade around his rec room passing by all those awards he got before he went wingnutty:
CW: What I said. Nick Gass of Politico: "Rick Perry did not exactly close the door on the possibility of another go at the presidency in 2016 during a contested convention in an interview with CNN." My thought was that Perry could just right back into the fray, but Gov. Oops! is looking for an opening in a brokered convention.
Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are preparing to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in an effort to help her campaign secure critical Hispanic votes in next week's Super Tuesday primaries." ...
... New York Times Editors: "'Everybody does it,' is an excuse expected from a mischievous child, not a presidential candidate. But that is Hillary Clinton's latest defense for making closed-door, richly paid speeches to big banks, which many middle-class Americans still blame for their economic pain, and then refusing to release the transcripts.... Mrs. Clinton further complained, 'Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?' The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries. Voters have every right to know what Mrs. Clinton told these groups.... By stonewalling on these transcripts Mrs. Clinton plays into the hands of those who say she's not trustworthy and makes her own rules."
... Eugene Scott of CNN: "A pair of Black Lives Matter activists interrupted Hillary Clinton Wednesday night at a private fundraiser, confronting the Democratic presidential candidate with past statements she made about youth in gangs. 'We want you to apologize for mass incarceration,' Ashley Williams said at the Charleston, South Carolina, event. 'I'm not a "super predator," Hillary Clinton.' Williams was referring to statements Clinton made in New Hampshire during her husband's 1996 presidential re-election campaign, defending then-President Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill. The bill advocated for tougher policing of gang members." ...
... Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "'Looking back, I shouldn't have used those words, and I wouldn't use them today,' Hillary Clinton told me in a statement when I asked her what she would have said to Ashley Williams, the activist who interrupted Clinton at a Charleston, S.C., fundraiser Wednesday night."
Beyond the Beltway
Chad Livengood of the Detroit News: "Two top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit's water system in October 2014 after General Motors Co. said the city's heavily chlorinated river water was rusting engine parts, according to governor's office emails examined by The Detroit News. Valerie Brader, then Snyder's environmental policy adviser, requested that the governor's office ask Flint's emergency manager to return to Detroit's system on Oct. 14, 2014, three weeks before Snyder's re-election. Mike Gadola, then the governor's chief legal counsel, agreed Flint should be switched back to Detroit water nearly a year before state officials relented to public pressure and independent research showing elevated levels of lead in the water and bloodstreams of Flint residents.... His message that was received by Snyder's Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore, Deputy Chief of Staff Beth Clement and then-Communications Director Jarrod Agen and Brader." Gadola grew up in Flint & his mother lives there. ...
... CW: Is it possible that Muchmore, Clement & Agen, all of whom had frequent, direct access to the governor, never mentioned the Flint water crisis to Snyder? Were they trying to ensure that the governor retained "plausible deniability"? Or implausible? If Snyder really surrounded himself with aides who kept him in the dark on critical issues, then I'm not so sure he's such a savvy businessman, much less a competent politician. I think it much more likely that they -- and others -- told Snyder about the contaminated water & he waved it off because switching Flint back to Detroit water would have undermined his bean-counting program. ...
... BTW, it wasn't as if Gov. Snyder couldn't have read about the many contaminants in Flint's water, say, back in September 2014, even without input from his staff.
"You Mean Veterans Can't Vote?" Charles Pierce: "A 90-Year-Old Iwo Jima Veteran Couldn't Vote in Scott Walker's Wisconsin.... Veterans. Grandparents. Honor students. Cops. Nurses.... These examples could provide an endless stream of campaign commercials that would have the advantage of actually being true. However, this would require competent, forward-thinking leadership at the Democratic National Committee which is, at the moment, being run by someone whose primary concentration apparently is ensuring herself good seats at the 2017 inauguration."
Sarah Kaplan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Three people were killed and another 14 injured after a gunman opened fire in [Hesston,] a small city in Kansas, indiscriminately shooting people along a highway and at his workplace, a lawn mower factory, before he was fatally shot by authorities, police said."
Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post: "Melissa Click, a professor who gained national notoriety during the protests at the University of Missouri, has been fired."
Way Beyond
Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "The United States and China have agreed to stiffen international financial sanctions against North Korea in a major shift for Beijing, which has long been unwilling to further isolate its intransigent ally. Whether the development, confirmed Thursday by diplomats at the United Nations Security Council, means that China will take steps to prevent North Korean ships from bringing coal and iron ore to Chinese ports remains unclear. The United States had pushed for a partial ban on permitting North Korean ships to enter ports around the world."
Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "... many Syrian medical workers in insurgent-held areas and human rights groups believe medical facilities are not just being hit by stray bombs or indiscriminate attacks, but have long been deliberately targeted by the Syrian government and its Russian allies. It is a measure of the deep mistrust that gravely challenges prospects for a truce set to begin Saturday.
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